


salt water, wind

by ceraunos



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, John Has a Daughter, M/M, Post-Canon, Resolution, Treasure island references, a lot of absolution, also they have a serious conversation too, flint is overwhelmed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-19 23:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceraunos/pseuds/ceraunos
Summary: In the darkness there is wonder, possibility, and perhaps, redemption.~Years after everything, Flint and Silver on a cliff top. Based onthistumblr post.





	salt water, wind

**Author's Note:**

> title stolen from evan williams' song, go listen to it [here](https://youtu.be/FMPznXNTYo8?t=162), idea stolen from stars-stripes-and-bucky's tumblr post, go give it some love [here](https://stars-and-stripes-and-bucky.tumblr.com/post/184694508156/slams-hands-on-the-table-somebodys-gotta-write).

James feels the brush of Thomas’ hand leave the back of his, a soft press against the corner of his jaw where trimmed hair grows more grey than fire these days. He feels the tether between them uncoil as Thomas starts back down the path, stretching out unhurried by promise of return, but doesn’t look; he can’t tear himself away from the figure on the side of the cliff, blowing against the evening wind, who is looking right back at him.

They watch each other for another long moment, and in the dying dusk he seems smaller than James’ memory makes him. Silver takes a step away from the edge and then another towards James, and James finds himself closing the distance without thought. Silver smiles, a tight closing of the corner of his mouth, and James wonders if the years have been longer than they aught to of.

‘James Flint, on English soil,’ Silver says. ‘I would have mocked the day.’

James says nothing, feels all the words that should have been said so long ago catch once again at his throat and stick there.

‘Should I be expecting hell and all his furies to follow?’

‘I – we’re leaving with the tide tomorrow. I had unfinished business here.’

‘Oh?’ Silver raises his eyebrows, and James supposes he shouldn’t feel so surprised at Silver’s obvious insinuation. There’s a long second when he doesn’t want to tell Silver anything at all, wants to run and hide in the ignorance of everything he’s done and been.

‘Hennessey is dying. Thomas got the letter a few months ago. It was his idea to come, in the end.’

Silver is silent, and Flint wonders if he ever even told him who Hennessy was.

‘Could you forgive him?’ he asks, eventually, like he already knows the answer. For the first time Silver looks tired, old in ways Flint has never know, even in their last days.

‘Never.’

‘Thomas thinks you do, doesn’t he.’ It isn’t a question. Flint feels fury spark and die in the same breath, except Silver is right; there is a part of him that Thomas will never know, the same part that lives on an island with six buried men and a box of Spanish treasure. It’s here now though, as if Silver is handing it all back to him on the spring wind.

‘Don’t you dare -’

‘How is he? Thomas?’

‘How long did you know?’

Thomas had told him, once, of the day a man came to visit, dressed in gold and smelling of the sea. Had told him how the crop had been grown and harvested three times since before James was delivered to him.

Silver sighs. Below them the sea sucks at the shore, tossing shingle through the waves.

‘I wasn’t certain. For a long time, I couldn’t risk everything on a possibility.’

‘A possibility. Do you have any idea -’ Flint snarls.

‘Would you have gone?’ Silver says. ‘At the end, was he enough to for you to leave it all? Everything we’d done.’

‘How can you ask that? He was _why_ it was done.’

Silver shakes his head, turns away.

“I honestly don’t know what I would do’. That’s what you said, and it wasn’t enough.’

‘He was always enough.’ Flint reels, caught in a cross wind being tossed mercilessly through years of ancient conflict.

‘It was bigger than him, by then. Maybe it always was.’

Flint runs, old fight flickering through him like a furnace catching light. Silver’s arm strikes, a winding blow to his stomach, and Flint buckles, nails clawing, fist landing against Silver’s jaw. His knuckles come away wet with blood. He doesn’t know whose.

The glint of metal flashes at his chest, a warning press of iron through his shirt. Silver holds the knife steady, eyes fixed dangerously on his.

‘Whatever you choose to tell your consciousness in the dark to help you sleep is none of my concern, but it doesn’t change the truth.’

Flint laughs, the bitterness of it catching on the wind.

‘Truth.’ Flint feels the ghost of something that feels older than time, an inevitable pull, and courage finally comes years too late. ‘There was hardly much of that between us.’

Silver drops the knife when Flint’s fingers find his.

‘How long did you know?’ Flint asks again, and even he doesn’t know which question he’s asking.

‘Always.’ Silver says, and it answers everything anyway.

Silver’s thumb touches the palm of Flint’s hand where an old scar has never faded.

‘Do you think, if we’d -’

‘Don’t.’

A bird cries, a calling out freedom to the horizon, and in it the sound carries the heat of Caribbean summers and the iron tang of victory. There is more too, but it melts away in an orange haze as the last of the sun dips below the sea and all the what ifs turn to what next.

Silver touches James’s jaw and once, years ago, Flint would have leaned in and claimed the kiss that hangs between them. Instead he touches his forehead to Silver’s and waits for the inevitable question. When it comes, it is like the breaking of a low hanging storm.

‘Would I have been enough?’

Flint shakes his head, just a little, against Silver’s and feels the press of their skin warm and close.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispers.

‘Okay,’ Silver nods.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Okay,’ Silver says again. ‘It’s okay now.

They stay like that, quiet in each other’s breath and the bit of James that will always be on that island buries itself back in the soil beneath their feet.

‘Papa?’

James becomes aware of a figure loitering a few feet from them, half shadowed behind Silver. Silver turns, but his fingers don’t quite leave James. He holds out a hand and a girl steps into it. She’s young, but perhaps older than she seems, buried in a shirt that must once have been John’s and carrying a half sized sword. Her skin is a rich, dark colour not dissimilar to someone else James once knew and he think’s it’s too much of a coincidence to not be true. James can’t stop the words tumbling from him in open shock.

‘Is she -’

Silver nods.

‘Papa, is this Captain Flint?’

Silver nods again and the girls mouth falls open in a silent gasp, slowly unwrapping herself from around Silver’s knees. Flint hardly hears her, too stunned by the surrealness of hearing Silver called ‘Papa’; for a man who, James is sure, once changed his name with every season, it seems incredibly concrete.

‘Will you fight me, sir?’ the girl says, drawing her sword. She stands in a perfect stance impressively resolute considering she only reaches James’ waist. James stutters a sudden laugh, charmed and somehow unsurprised. Something blossoms, a tight wonder that floods his chest and threatens to take him to his knees at the picture.

‘Not today,’ Silver says, and nudges her back down the hill to where James realises Madi and Thomas are waiting. ‘Tell them we’ll be down soon.’

‘You – she’s yours?’

Silver nods, swallows. James suddenly wants to know everything there is to know about the impossible little girl who makes Silver’s eyes shine in a way James has never known.

‘Madi, she didn’t tell me, at first. It took time, a long time, before she could forgive me, after everything.’

James realises their fingertips are still brushing in a loose hold, and he tightens it.

‘You told her about me?’

‘Not you, exactly. But in a way, yes.’

The confusion must show on James’ face, a strange cocktail of incredulity and flattery. He hardly thinks he’s a suitable children’s story.

‘You’re not the only one with a consciousness to ease,’ Silver says, and in an instant James understands.

‘She only knows what you wanted to believe.’

‘She knows the best of you, and sometimes, the best of me.’

‘One day she’ll learn the rest.’

Silver doesn’t answer. He points to a dot on an outcrop along the coast.

‘See that light?’

James hums, watching the tiny orange glow flicker in the the darkness.

‘It’s mine. I own a pub now.’

James laughs and Silver joins him until they are breathless and gasping and the stars feel closer than ever. In the darkness, James considers, remembering a day that once felt like the end of everything, there is possibility and, perhaps, second chances.

‘How dare you laugh,’ Silver says between breaths as they start back down the cliff side, ‘I happen to be a very good cook.’

**Author's Note:**

> she's back, she's written some black sails nonsense again. it's been a little while though so pls be kind. this is currently unedited, I saw the post and blurted words onto a page, so please let me know if you see any errors! x 
> 
> come and scream at/with me on [tumblr](https://ceraunos.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/ceraunos)


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